TOKYO, Jan. 28, 2022—The Japanese trade bureaucracy, forced to abandon several years ago for serious accidents, are striving to reactivate fast nuclear reactor R&D for their survival as a key ministry that’s being threatened by a rapid shift to renewable energies from nuclear and fossil fuels, the change that is diluting the ministry’s administrative authority.
The two countries have exchanged MOU, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Jan. 28. It was signed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ Terra Power and the Japanese government’s Japan Atomic Energy Agency and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it said.
Whether the project moves on aside, it was apparently initiated by the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry bureaucracy whose authority has been eroding in recent years to the development of renewable energies that’s being administered by the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport and several other government entities, instead of METI as the singular authority like for fossil fuels and nuclear.
‘We have changed so much,’ a senior METI official told me, referring to the weakening of the ministry’s authority
(Details of the MOU are available at yomiuri.co.
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